​Meet the Men Who Throw a Yearly Sausage Fest

​How camaraderie, intestinal casings, and penis jokes may inspire you to host your own meat party

Every year, by an agreed upon Sunday in December, Scott Koehler will have cleared the detritus from the single-car garage of his home in London, Canada. Gone will be the kids’ toys, the yard tools, the empty cases of beer. Atop the beer fridge, improvised by Koehler to accommodate a couple of kegs and outfitted with taps, will be a television tuned to whatever NFL game is on that day.

Last year was the seventh annual sausage party and Koehler needed to ready the space for the six other guys who arrived that day. Each had 28 pounds of ground meat in a large bowl or container, already mixed with spices and other ingredients from a recipe carefully selected to earn accolades. (Still top of mind is the ill-considered moose sausage that one of the guys made a few years ago. “Tough and dry,” says Mathew Green. “Pretty rough,” agrees event founder Tom Helm. Nobody will publicly out the offender, at least not yet, but he’s been put on notice. “He heard about it,” says Helm. “All year.”)

Marty Kovacs showed up with his grandfather’s cast-iron sausage press. Helm brought the newer, smaller version that he had his brother build. And then the participants assumed their usual posts, an assembly line that’s been fine-tuned over the years: Helm is responsible for soaking the pork intestines in warm water before feeding them onto the horns of the sausage press. Green, Helm’s nephew-by-marriage, and Marty Kovacs, ready the old-school press. One will crank while the other is on sausage output, putting some back pressure into it to fill the casing properly. Once the meat is fed through, it’s coiled on a large baking sheet until the casing on that horn is finished. Then the casing is pinched off and handed to the one or more guys who moves on to weigh, measure, and package the sausage into Ziploc bags for the men to take home.

Trevor Clarke, Helm’s nephew, and Jamie Niles similarly work the smaller press. Koehler takes his spot at the barbecue where he grills the extras to keep everyone fed and also makes sure nobody’s beer glass is empty.

“We’re like a finely tuned machine,” says Green.

This annual no-girls-allowed gathering was borne of Tom Helm’s love of food and genuine affection for family and friends “who might as well be family,” he says. “It’s like a guy’s cookie exchange,” says Mat Green. The men range in age from early 30s (though one guy’s teenage son joined in 2015) to late 50s. It’s a highly coveted event and the group limits participation to those who are related by blood or marriage or who managed to get in early, like Koehler.

There are, of course, the requisite jokes. “Sausage party. All guys,” says Green. “The cheap jokes are always there.” The process itself lends to humor. Feeding the casings onto the horn and pinching off the sausage, Helm says, is “kinda phallic.”

But the group is serious about the quality of the product. “Guys being guys, it’s a bit competitive,” says Helm. Along with the mocked moose recipe, there was the poor guy, whose identity is also being protected for the time being, who brought low-fat ground pork that his wife had picked up at a grocery store and which doesn’t make for good sausage. The guys all agree. You need fat in a sausage.

They gave him last year to redeem himself. “He’s close to being outed,” says Green, though nobody really believes that. It’s far more fun to rib the guy for years to come.

Green himself was safe with a fan favorite that he reproduces each year, a maple-onion sausage that’s a “keeper,” he says. “I’ve told the guys I might try something different and am quite quickly told, ‘no, you're not.'” Another keeper is Marty Kovacs’ grandfather’s recipe, passed down along with the sausage press, for a Formosa sausage, named after the small town in Canada where the family has its roots. Some of the more memorable sausages have included a jalapeño cheddar, an English breakfast, a sausage that contained apple, another with celery.

By day’s end, the guys grab their 28 pounds of various varieties of sausage and straggle out the door. Much of the product will be gone by spring. Some will make it to backyard summer barbecues but, fingers-crossed-not-this-year, some may still be in the freezer when next year’s sausage party rolls around. “Every year there's at least one you wish you didn't have,” says Helm.

Yeah, says Scott Koehler. “I give those to family members for Christmas.”

Green’s Fan Favorite Recipe: Maple Sausage

This can be made into normal sausages in casings or as patties to cook up quickly for breakfast sandwiches. Make as many sausage jokes during the production as possible.

What you’ll need:

10 lb. venison, cubed

11 lb. pork, cubed

3 medium onions, chopped

7 Tbsp salt

3 Tbsp sage

2 Tbsp dry mustard

5 tsp ground pepper

1 ¾ cups maple syrup

1 cup milk

approximately 42 feet casing

How to make it:

In a very large bowl, mix together the venison, pork, onions, salt, sage, dry mustard, and pepper. Then mix in the maple syrup and milk. Gradually run everything through the grinder and into casings. Makes roughly 21 pounds sausage.

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